Video shows wads of cash in Obeid safe

Footage showing ICAC investigators emptying thick bundles of $50 dollar notes from an Obeid family safe has been played at a public hearing in Sydney.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard the cash came to $31,300 and represented five days' takings from three Obeid-owned eateries at Circular Quay that are at the centre of allegations disgraced former MP Eddie Obeid improperly lobbied fellow Labor ministers about Sydney harbourside leases.

The video, taken in November 2011 at Obeid offices at Birkenhead Point, shows ICAC investigators asking family associate Paul Maroon whether anything else of value is in the safe.

"Footy tickets," Mr Maroon is heard to say, laughing.

The ICAC's inquiry into Mr Obeid's conduct is three-pronged.

The first investigation involves the eateries and the second centres on generous water licences covering an Obeid-owned farm.

The third involves allegations that in 2005 Eddie Obeid hand-delivered to then-Treasurer Michael Costa a letter requesting a meeting with the head of Direct Health Solutions (DHS) without revealing his family and associate Rocco Triulcio had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested on the company.

On Thursday, the commission heard evidence as part of the third inquiry that Paul Obeid, the second-eldest of Eddie Obeid's nine children, told DHS managing director Paul Dundon he would try to set up a potentially lucrative meeting with Mr Costa.

The founders of the fledgling company, which promised employers a solution to high absenteeism, were eyeing the public sector as they sought clients.

Mr Dundon said he had a "low level of confidence" that Paul Obeid and Mr Triulcio would be able to come good on their promise to get him through the doors of NSW government, but said they had offered $300,000 seed money to get the business off the ground.

But when Mr Dundon handed a letter to Mr Costa over to Paul Obeid, he told the inquiry, it found its way to the then-minister and a meeting followed.

Paul Obeid said he didn't think there was anything wrong with asking his father how to go about setting up a meeting with Mr Costa, who he agreed was a close political ally of Eddie Obeid's.

"There was nothing sinister about it," Paul Obeid said.

"He (Mr Dundon) wanted to make a presentation to government and, you know, my father's in government, I just made the call. It was very natural."

An indignant Paul Obeid complained that in an earlier corruption inquiry, his family had been criticised for failing to set up a formal ministerial meeting.

"It appears there's laws for some and there's different laws for us," he said.

But he and his brothers didn't generally seek their father's counsel on business matters, he added, because he'd left the business world so long ago: "I think there were still Telex machines when he was in business".

He disagreed with a suggestion from assistant commissioner Anthony Whealy QC that it would have been the "kiss of death" as far as pitching for government business for Mr Costa to learn the Obeids had a stake in DHS.

"But you would have imagined, if you had thought about it, that if Michael Costa had known the Obeid family had an involvement in this, he would have run a mile from it, wouldn't he? Or he should have, anyway," Mr Whealy said.